Mad Men: What happened to the main characters

Mad Men resumes with season five this week after a break of 16 months from our
screens.

Mad Men resumes on Tuesday 27th March with Series Five. Here is how the main characters were faring at the end of the fourth season.

Don Draper (Jon Hamm)

Has television ever served up a more seductive character than Don Draper? On casting Jon Hamm for the part, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner admitted: “It was quite a challenge finding someone that good looking who could act too”. Legions of admirers would suggest he succeeded. But it’s not just Don’s ability to bowl over a roomful of secretaries – Don is the ultimate man’s man too, as easily charming in the company of exiled European aristocrats, louche Greenwich Village bohemians or unimaginably wealthy hotel magnates. As Stirling Cooper’s most prized asset, he's given licence to bring in and throw out whichever clients he chooses, and in the last series had been made a name partner in the new Stirling Cooper Draper Pryce. But Don also has a dark past, having swapped identities with a fellow soldier killed in the Korean War in order to escape an unhappy home life, and cracks have started to appear as he juggles his many secrets at home and at work. Left by his icy wife Betty, Don shocked us all by spontaneously proposing to his latest secretary at the end of the last series – but who honestly thinks he'll remain faithful to her?

Betty Francis (née Hofstadt, formerly Draper) (January Jones)

Poor old Betty. On the road from Season One to Season Five, the icily beautiful blonde has lost: the love of Don Draper, the most desired man on Madison Avenue; her plushly furnished house in the suburbs; her maid, Carla; the respect of her children; her father. And she’s come pretty darn close to losing her mind. She has gained: an unfeasibly well-behaved baby; and a new marriage to a smug silver fox of a politician named Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), perhaps the most tedious character ever to appear in the programme. Still, she never looks less than a knock-out. It’s just a shame there’s a hole where her heart should be.

Pete is the smarmy and ambitious young advertising account executive. In the early series, he even tried to blackmail Don Draper with information he knew about the truth of his past. We've seen him have an affair with Peggy - and marry a dullard called Trudy. Actor Vincent Kartheiser has joked about how creepy viewers find his character. He recalled meeting a woman who told him: "When you come on the screen, I don't want to be in the room. It's a completely physical thing. You make my flesh creep. I loathe you.'" The actor said ruefully: "I mean, where do you go from there?" Things were going pretty well for Pete at the end of season four. Trudy (Alison Brie) has just had their first child and he'd been paid $50,000 for helping keep Draper's breakaway advertising firm afloat.

Roger Sterling (John Slattery)

Misogynist. Bigot. Narcissist. Booze hound. There's plenty not to like about Roger - born rather than working his way into the high life (his father co-founded Stirling Cooper ad agency), his lack of interest in the working man is underlined by such memorably blunt lines as "Well, I gotta go learn a bunch of people's names before I fire them." But Roger is a product of his time - an unreconstructed, old-school cad - and its hard not to admire the aplomb with which he has embraced the vices of life on Madison Avenue. He may not put in long hours at his desk, but there's nobody more adept or committed when it comes to plying disgruntled clients with martinis – he barely slowed down after suffering two heart attacks. Having left his long-suffering wife for twentysomething secretary Jane, he was unable in the last series to resist jumping back into bed with his voluptuous ex-mistress Joan Harris, and now looks set to be the secret father to her child.

Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss)

Ambitious, clever Peggy is in many ways the most interesting character in Mad Men, a tangle of contradictions held together by sheer force of will. The product of a ferocious Catholic background, Peggy made the leap from secretary to copy writer with the help of Don - yet also nearly derailed her own efforts by becoming pregnant with Pete Campbell's child. That's a secret only Don knows, just as she knows more about his past than anyone else in the agency, or indeed in his life, and that bond between them has created many of the most memorable scenes of the past four series, including the night she worked through her own birthday dinner, losing a boyfriend, but gaining Don's respect. Given their closeness, Peggy can still be surprised by his behaviour: she didn't know about his engagement, and she is hurt when he rejects or criticises her ideas. Her clothes and appearance improving as her career takes off, Peggy is a rising star, held back by misogynistic attitudes towards female executives. But no-one should bet against her determination, or her willingness to be different, however prim she seems on the surface.

Joan Harris (née Holloway) (Christina Hendricks)

The queen bee of Stirling Cooper, Joan not only calls the shots among the secretary pool but - as we found out in the chaos following her absence in series three - single-handedly holds the office together. She may not have Peggy's ambition, but for guile she is in a league of her own, able to string along men supposedly her superiors (not least her boss, Roger Sterling) without breaking a sweat. But Joan is no one-dimensional femme fatale - underlying the sass is an insecurity about the type of woman she wants to be: at times craving the security of a stable marriage, at others drawn to and hooked on the power that comes with her status at the office. The collision of these two worlds looks set to reach a head with a baby on the way - can she juggle her busy work life and raising a child, with her husband still away in Vietnam? Can she keep the identity of its father from her husband? And will romance ever arise between Joan - more or less the only secretary not to have wound up in Don's bed - and our lothario protagonist?

Mad Men series five begins on Sky Atlantic on Tuesday 27 March at 9.00pm